


Disarmed

by antediluvian



Category: Demon's Lexicon - Sarah Rees Brennan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 06:53:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antediluvian/pseuds/antediluvian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the series. Mae has economics on her mind and a demon in her bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disarmed

**Author's Note:**

> This is not plotty, in the slightest. I ship Mae/Nick terribly and just wanted to fuzzle all over them for a bit.

The caravan was one of the smaller ones that the Market had to offer, and its outside was dented and painted with large colourful flowers. The window shutters were a shiny dark green. It did not look as though it could possibly belong to the Market’s leader, but it was in fact the homeliest place that Mae Crawford had ever lived.

Its unprepossessing and unimportant appearance was partly by design. The assassins - a handful of them so far - sent by magician Circles from around the world, all seemed to think that the Goblin Market’s leader would be living in something a little more glamorous, like the large sleek shark of a caravan set back in the dark shelter of the trees, a cluster of other caravans near it but not… encroaching on it.

And then they snuck their way inside, hands shining silver with deadly magic, and found Nick waiting for them. 

And Nick didn’t need magic to make him very, very deadly.

Mae wondered, sometimes, if there would ever be an end to the assassination attempts. She understood that all changes took time to be accepted, but it was hard not to feel a little disheartened that some Circles seemed to think that it would be better to murder an eighteen year old girl (and her brother, her boyfriend, her friends) than to reconsider the way that they were being run.

They seemed to think that Mae sat around in the heart of the Market, gilded with a demon’s power, the best dancer of the Market at her right hand and her magician brother at her left, plotting the downfall of Circles all over the world. 

Mae’s job was not nearly so glamorous.

Most of it, in fact, was a question of economics and organisation.

Which was why, at eleven o’clock at night, Mae was curled up on her bed reviewing the Market’s finances for the past two months and chewing absently on the end of her pink ponytail. The Market was now trying to provide support to magically-inclined children whose families had rejected them, so that the angry-eyed teenagers had somewhere to go apart from a magicians’ Circle. Some of that support included helping the kids to stay in school or pursue other educational opportunities. 

And once they had got over the first shock of their family’s reaction, Mae and Jamie, or Sin and Lydia, would go with them to see their family, to talk to them and to show them that their child could be able to levitate a saucepan, or turn water into shining ice, or make light spin out of the air and curl around you like a cat, and _still_ be a good person. Still be _their_ child. And underlying that explanation was a lesson that was gradually finding its way into the very bones and soul of the Market, that it was not magic that made monsters out of people. 

It was people who made monsters out of magic. 

Mae spat the end of her ponytail out of her mouth and remembered to add in the money that some of the dancers - Sin included - had been making teaching after-school dance classes. Not the kind of dances that would have school kids learning how to call a demon, but some contemporary fusion classes that were certainly proving pretty popular. It wasn’t, technically, Market money, but the dancers all contributed a portion of it anyway because the Market was home, was family, and you took care of things like that.

Something knocked against Mae’s window and, even though she knew better, her skin jumped along her spine. 

Nick was at her window. His face was there, like some nightmare out of the dark, a thing of sharp white angles and starless eyes.

Mae swallowed her heart back down to where it belonged, thudding too hard behind her breastbone. She leaned over to open the window, keeping one hand on her laptop to hold it still.

“I have a door,” she told him, glaring. 

Nick’s eyes flicked past her, to the door in question. “Yes,” he agreed.

“Traditionally,” Mae said, “people knock at doors, not windows.”

Nick shrugged. “I’ve never been much for tradition.” He put a hand against her window frame, fingers curling around it, looking a question at her with his dark, dark eyes. 

Mae sighed and made it as huffy as she could even though she didn’t really feel that put-out at all. “Fine,” she said, “but know that I’m only saying that because I’m going to watch and objectify you.”

Nick grinned at her. “Fine by me,” he said, and levered himself up and through her window. It shouldn’t have been graceful, because Nick was not a size that was suited to getting through Mae’s window, but somehow it was. 

Mae watched the slow flex and roll of Nick’s shoulders under his t-shirt and bit the corners of her lips to keep from smiling too hard. She smiled at him anyway, when he straightened up, and Nick looked amused.

“I feel like a piece of meat,” he drawled.

Mae dimpled. “Well…” she drawled back, and Nick laughed low in his throat. He leaned over her, bracing himself against the wall behind her, eyes dark and steady, and Mae reached up to touch the collar of his t-shirt. The tips of her fingers just grazed his throat and Nick’s lashes lowered, so that his gaze was veiled and inscrutable. There was something catlike about him when he did that. He was good-looking in a way that was almost ridiculous, all lines and shadows and stark unyielding beauty.

And he watched her, still, calm, waiting. 

Mae curled her fingers against his collar, tugging it slightly. “I don’t only value you for your looks,” she told him, as Nick yielded to her tugging and leaned down further, his mouth brushing hers, so that Mae spoke next against his lips and the faint sharpness of his teeth. “I sometimes like your personality too.”

Nick’s laugh was a shivering purr against her skin and Mae’s breath caught in her throat. She fisted her hand in the front of Nick’s shirt and _pulled_ , and Nick caught himself with a hand and a knee against the mattress and the other hand sliding strong fingers up into her hair. His lips parted against hers and Mae ran her tongue lightly against his teeth, felt his growl through her skin and her bones and right through the very core of her. 

Nick slid his mouth along her jaw, over the soft curve of her throat. “Careful,” he said, low and dark, “that’s my favourite shirt,” his teeth grazed her skin, “and it’s the only one that’s clean.”

“You mean it’s your favourite shirt _because_ it’s the only one that’s clean,” Mae corrected him, breathless, sliding back up the bed and towing Nick with her by said shirt. The demon looked superbly untroubled by her rough handling of his clothes, whatever he might say otherwise. He braced a hand beside her head and brushed the hair out of her eyes with the other, tracing his thumb back behind her ear.

“Same thing,” he said.

Mae shivered, going soft and warm underneath him, that ghost touch making her eyes slide closed despite her efforts to prevent them.

Still, she snorted at him disapprovingly. “Do the laundry then.”

“That’s Alan’s job,” Nick said, immediately.

Mae opened one eye and gave him a good long look. Nick gazed back at her, sphinxlike. His thumb brushed the underside of her breast, his fingers splayed against her side.

Dirty tactics, Mae thought, and fisted her hands in his shirt, dragging it up over his head. Nick rolled his shoulders, helping her, emerging from the shirt with his hair mussed and his eyes heavy-lidded.

Mae ran her hands over his bare shoulders, curling her fingers against the muscle, then dug her nails into his shoulderblades.

Nick made a sound in his throat, low and guttural as a snarl but nothing near angry. His body against hers was heavy and warm, one hand sliding around the back of her thigh and hitching her leg up against his side. Mae pressed her foot against his back, her breath hitching, her mouth against the line of Nick’s throat. She bit his collarbone and Nick kissed her ear, the side of her head, his hips pressing down against hers.

Mae’s whole body felt like liquid and fire. Her fingers were in Nick’s hair and he was kissing her like she was the only thing in the world, his tongue against hers, his hands lingering sure and patient on her skin.

When they were done, Nick pulled his jeans back on but left them unbuttoned, and Mae shamelessly stole his favourite t-shirt to wear for herself, leaning her head affectionately against his shoulder.

“I knew there was a reason I kept you around,” she told him, beaming up at him. Nick’s eyes were sleepy, heavy-lidded, but the corner of his mouth curled.

“For my faaaabulous taste in clothes,” he drawled questioningly, his hand curled around her hip. His ring was cold against her skin.

“Exactly.” Mae closed her eyes and drew away, just enough that she wasn’t plastered sweatily against Nick’s side. He kept his hand on her side, his thumb against the cotton of his t-shirt, but he made no move to follow her.

Nick was not exactly the cuddly type. 

Mae drifted in and out of sleep, curling herself into the comma curve of Nick’s body when the night’s chill set in. He stirred when she touched him, eyes a brief gleam in the dark, before he closed them again. He didn’t drape his arm over her, but the line of his body shifted, made space for Mae to fit herself against him.

Something hard poked her in the back.

It was a little sad, but Mae knew better than to think it was because Nick was pleased to see her.

“Um,” she said carefully. “Do you think you could maybe take _some_ of your knives off before you come to bed?”

 _Some_ was her effort at  a compromise.

Nick had quite literally never been without some kind of weapon, even when he was without clothes.

His breath huffed against her hair. “Hm,” he said. “No.”

Mae sighed and tried an experimental wiggle, but the hilt stayed pressing against her back. And now that she’d noticed it, it was really quite annoying.

So she shifted her hips instead, pressing back against Nick in a way that made him slide his arm around her waist, his palm hot against her stomach through his t-shirt.

“Please?” Mae asked, sleepy and sweet. “Don’t be difficult.”

Nick shifted, coiling around her, and his teeth were against the curve of her jaw. “You could take them off for me,” he suggested, low, dark, his palm sliding to touch bare skin.

Mae smiled in the darkness and rolled to face him.

While she undid the knife sheathes, feeling for the buckles by touch alone, Nick watched her. Mae leaned up to kiss him once, a kiss that was more comfort than sex.

The pale light from the lanterns outside cast strange shadows over his face, but it didn’t hide that quiet unwavering calm in his eyes as he let her disarm him. When she settled over him, he stretched up to kiss her, pushing himself up on his elbows. That kiss was far less about comfort.

Mae left him one knife. 

 

 


End file.
